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Robb_Barrett
Robb_Barrett
Level 10
January 31, 2016
Question

Multiple Tokens result in missed attribution

  • January 31, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 2253 views

I thought I had found a form embed problem, but I think I found something much bigger.

Let's say I fill out a form today using my work email address. A record is created in Marketo, and that record is eventually put into an engagement program.

Let's say I come back in a few days and fill out another form. This time I accidentally put in my home email address.

Several days pass. I get an Engagement Program email. I click on the email and I'm taken to a page with a form on it. It's all pre-filled so I don't even pay attention to the email address.

Here's what's happening in Marketo:

  1. The email is being sent to my work email address
  2. The open and click are being recorded as my work email record.
  3. The form-fill is pre-filled with the values from the second time I entered information and is linked to my second record.
  4. My Abandoned Form rate has increased because my original record doesn't get the form fill.

So how do I fix this?  I think I need to change the _mkto_tkn on the page to match the value in the URL parameter and to do that I need to decrypt the parameter value and I don't think I can do it before the form is pre-populated with the information on the second record. It also looks like if I change the email address on the form it could potentially create a new record instead of changing the email address on the record itself.

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1 reply

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
February 6, 2016

There's no decrypting the mkt_tok.  But that's okay, because mkt_tok and the _mkto_trk, while intimately connected, do not share internal information (when you think about how they're generated, it's not possible for one to be a subset/version of the other).

The situation you're describing is probably pretty rare, but is actually an ideal moment to dedupe the two leads, rather than either [a] assigning all the past and future activities to the lead that converted or [b] leaving two segregated activity logs.  Some very dirty ways to approach this come to mind already, but let me think more about it before making a recommendation.

    Robb_Barrett
    Robb_BarrettAuthor
    Level 10
    February 9, 2016

    OK, but let's say I send you an email to your work address that leads to a page with a form with a social fill option.  You click the social button and, because your LinkedIn is tied to your personal email, a new lead is created. Here's your use case.

    Robb Barrett
    Dan_Stevens_
    Dan_Stevens_
    Level 10
    February 9, 2016

    This is perfect example on why we don't use social sign-on with our forms (since most social account email addresses are personal and not the same as the business email address in Marketo).  I actually think this issue is more common than one might think.  Especially in top-of-the-funnel engagement, where some prefer to initially provide alternate email addresses until a relationship has been established.  It would be great if Marketo included secondary email address fields so that this complete view of the customer can be achieved.

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